What does it mean to be “white”
My girlfriend got me a 23andMe DNA report for Christmas this year and my results have just came through, and I found out that I have an african ancestor somewhere in my ancestral line. You can see a screenshot of my DNA report below where, to my surprise, 0.2% of my DNA matches with people native to West Africa*.
This was surprising to say the least, as I was expecting about 75% European and 25% Phillippines. You see today, being 0.2% of anything is not enough to consider yourself a part of that culture. Nor should you.
The concept of a “one-drop-rule” (where “one drop” of black blood constitutes one as black) dates back to the early 1850’s, however still has ramifications for today. I recently read an article in which Steve Bradt with the Harvard Gazette talks about how even today these notions exist and ramifications are happening:
“The legal notion of hypodescent [one-drop-rule] has been upheld as recently as 1985, when a Louisiana court ruled that a woman with a black great-great-great-great-grandmother could not identify herself as “white” on her passport.” (Bradt, 2010)
So I ask: What does it mean to be white? Shall we assign a number to people’s European Ancestry? I am a qaurter Southeast Asian according to my DNA report, surely I cannot put “white” on my passport either. Is it falsifying documents if I claim to be “black”? Maybe I should select White, Black, and Asian, on my documents; that’ll really throw them for a loop.
But alas, if you talk with me and ask me to dance it will become instantly clear that I am white. Being apart of a culture is so much more than blood; culture is history, language, art, lifestyle. Culture is not something passed through bloodlines, it’s how a person is raised and experiences the world. Some will ask that I distinguish between Race and Culture here, but Race tells you nothing of who a person is. If you wish to know someone, ask them for their culture.
References
Bradt, S. (2010, December 9). ‘One-drop rule’ persists. Harvard Gazette. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/one-drop-rule-persists/
